Author: Patricia Morgan

I'm a human being bumbling through this world. Sometimes I think I know where I'm going and what I'm doing; other times I'm just a dandelion seed in the wind. I write as a process to illuminate my way and to reflect on where I've been.

New Edition of Aweigh of Life

I’ve recently republished Aweigh of Life with IngramSpark.  The new edition is published under my name, Patricia Morgan, and is available through the usual sources on line.  Besides making a few grammatical corrections, this new version includes some maps (at the request of readers) and photos.

What has been lost in republishing is all the fine 4- and 5-star reviews readers posted with my first edition.  Below are several reviews of that first edition, previously published under the pen name of E.D. Snow, as they appeared in Amazon Reviews. I encourage my readers to re-post their reviews… not to feed my ego or even bank account (for the Universe knows I’m not getting rich on this!) but to encourage others to enjoy the adventure.

“The book is INCREDIBLE!” Aweigh if Life is a poignant memoir. I couldn’t read it fast enough! She takes you with her on her incredible journey in such a way you can almost smell the salt air. The quiet times, the exhilarating adventures, all of her trials and tribulations to find herself. Definitely recommended reading. – Amy C.

“Sail Away” Imagine yourself boarding a sailboat in your early twenties and cruising the South Pacific for the next ten years, island hopping, moorage in blue lagoons, footprints on white sand beaches, swimming tropical pools, hiking palm tree covered islands, living on fish and coconuts, hunkering down through a harrowing hurricane, meeting colorful natives and swapping sea tales with other ‘yachties,’ and all the myriad experiences of such a soul-stirring, life-affirming, wondrously fascinating journey.

Now imagine what circumstances, obligations, trajectories and vectors would converge upon you until one day you realize you must leave the sea, and its ‘way of life,’ behind.

Finally, in your later years you are drawn back to that time, through the extensive journals you kept and by the very pull of memories steeped in golden sunshine, blue seas and fair winds, and you sit down and write it all out.

Anchors aweigh, come aboard with a woman who did just that, lived in communion with deep waters, hitched her fate to sea breezes and sailed away to the far horizon. The author is an everywoman – imperfect, impassioned, sweet and not. Like all of us her sails are at times full or slack, relationships bucking headwinds or on a tailwind, her life making headway or in the doldrums.

This book is an easy read, as effortless as a reach on five knot trade winds of a soft, sunny summer afternoon in following seas. Grab a coconut water, put on your favorite sunglasses and Hawaiian shirt, pull anchor, trim the mainsail and cruise. Aweigh. – Freemind Arcata

“Brilliant Details of a South Pacific so few of us know.” [Patricia Morgan] is one intrepid woman, and very, very strong, both physically and mentally. Her incredible memory for details of her seven years sailing through the South Pacific 40 years ago makes these experiences seem like they’re happening right now. The book is really a “personal journey” memoir, in which she reveals disquieting aspects of her family and upbringing, and how she comes to grips with being a rebellious “outsider” who wants to live a minimalist lifestyle, freed of the trappings of capitalist society.

The book gives a real sense of the adventure of sailing amidst remote islands that most of us have never heard of nor know anything about the people who live there. Two chapters really stay with me: the first is her absolutely spot-on depiction of the misogyny and racism of Northern Queensland 40 years ago–she really captures the harshness of that place then, remnants of which remain a part of Australian society to this day. The second is her stunningly beautiful description of giving birth to the first white baby on a tiny island in Papua New Guinea. That chapter could stand alone for any anthropologist or poet.

Friends who are sailors to whom I’ve recommended the book say it includes some of the finest writing about sailing they have read. The book could use a bit of editing, for repetitive passages and awkward phrasing, but all in all, this is a magnificent effort. Well done! Let’s make it into a movie! – Erica Esau

“One of my favorite books ever.” I read a lot and this is one of my absolute favorite books. The writing is beautiful and was comforting to me in a way that is hard to articulate. With all we have going on in the world, this was like balm for my soul. I felt like I was on a journey of my own while reading along and it felt like stepping back from all of the busyness and chatter and craziness. I slowed down toward the end simply because I didn’t want it to end. I highly recommend this book. – Amanda C

“Tales of Adventures on the High Seas delivered straight from the heart of a remarkable gal.” “A Sweeping Tale” doesn’t do justice as a description of this book. You know how it feels when you are reading a really good book and suddenly realize you’re only 30 pages from the end? “But I don’t want it to end” you think. That’s this book. [The] story is a “warts and all” memoir told with grace, humor, irony and just a tiny bit of sarcasm. Her gift for describing the geography and nautical aspect of her travels will pull you in to the point where you can actually feel the salt spray coming over the bow of your Lazy Boy Recliner. Beyond that her brutal honesty and candid confessions of doubt, hurt and amusement make this book so much more than a travelogue. I am a compulsive reader. I normally read to “learn” stuff (non-fiction & history) and an equal amount of literature that makes me “feel” stuff. This book covered both bases. A 2-fer if you will. I recommend it highly. – Geoffrey Williams

“Honesty and Depth.” This book is an emotional moving metaphor of a fearless, strong, independent woman who is looking for the soul she has always possessed. Its filled with her fascinating adventures throughout the South Pacific Islands in the 1970’s and gives us an historical and cultural glimpse of the special people that shared her life. It’s a page turner and one that I couldn’t put down and didn’t want to end. We can see you now E.D. Snow and thanks for sharing this piece of your life with us! – Betsy P

“Highly Recommend.” Aweigh of Life is a must-read for all life adventurers and explorers. Fascinating and intimate story of a woman’s journey forward, while coming to terms with her past. Throughout, it’s a heartfelt memoir of a seven year trip of a lifetime, sailing the waters and learning of people and cultures in the South Pacific seas. I couldn’t put it down, and I didn’t want it to end. – Pamela

 

 

Do you know the story?

 

At first glance, what do you see?

I would not have noticed but for my daughter.  She was driving me to the Portland Union Train Station to catch a train to Seattle.  Going up Burnside, she suddenly stopped in the middle of the street and her hand reached across my face, angling back a tiny bit, to take a photo.  My first reaction was to look behind me to see if her stopping in the street was interrupting traffic or might possibly cause an accident.  And then, feeling a tiny bit irritated that my space had been violated with her hand thrust in front of my face, I asked, “What are you doing?”

She said, “There’s a person in that pile of garbage.”  My response was, “Nooo.  No there isn’t.”

By then she had driven on. She handed me her phone and said, “Blow it up.”   When I increased the size of the photo, indeed, there was a person sleeping in that pile of garbage.   Oh, my.  Oh, my! In that moment, questions flashed past me. Is she (or he) alive? Had those been her possessions and her place to  sleep the night before, and had the city officials torn it down, like they did repeatedly, and shoved it to the side of the road to be picked up by the garbage collector?  Or had that simply been where, in desperation and exhaustion — or in a drug-addicted haze — she found a moment of rest?   I even had the horrifying imagining of a backhoe or Bobcat scooping up this pile of trash and throwing it into a dumpster.  Oh, my.

When I first saw this picture on my daughter’s phone, the writing was not yeet on the wall.  But let it be on your wall.

 DO NOT THROW ME AWAY!

I don’t know the story of this person buried in a garbage heap.  Nor the stories of the thousands of other homeless folks who sleep on the streets across America, a country whose richest could provide food, housing, medical care, and mental health care for every individual in this country. But I know in my heart that that person did not choose to be in this heap of trash.  But they’re there, and they’re suffering. And my daughter sees them.  She sees them when they’re invisible to others.

Do you know her story, this person buried in that trash heap?  Of course you don’t. Have you passed judgment?  Possibly. Could it be that maybe she’s only 15 years old, and she finally fled the nightly rapes by her stepfather, only to find herself on the streets of Portland, homeless, with no resources. Or was she so desperate to escape constant emotional or physical abuse that living on the streets was preferable?

Or did he have chronic pain from an injury or congenital defect for which a doctor prescribed him Oxycontin?  And then his doctor’s license was yanked or he himself couldn’t get relief from the prescribed dose, so he turned to street heroin which took him down.

Does she have a severe mental illness, no fault of her own, just the run-of-the-mill chemical imbalance in the brain that exasperated her parents and school personnel to the point that her parents kick her out for her obstreperous behavior? Did she suffer from severe clinical depression?

Was she simply experimenting with drugs, never thinking she’d become an addict?

The list of scenarios is endless for how this person ended up in a trash heap.

Should the story that left them homeless matter?  Does it matter if it’s a boy or a girl, a old man or a middle-aged mother?  I don’t think so. What matters is they are there on our streets.  That’s the current chapter of their story that you can see. And it is a symbol of the state of our society.

But possibly a more important question is what is your story?  How we perceive things alters what we see. How did you end up blinded and unable to see society’s pain?  How did you lose your compassion, your empathy? How did you come to hold your possessions and riches so close to your heart and give them more value than this young person’s life?   How did you come to be afraid to look at society’s discards?

Are you aware of where your beliefs and prejudices came from? Are you aware of the historiological slant to information provided to you? Are you aware of the agreements you unconsciously made from birth to think the way you do? How many of your beliefs are based on assumptions?  Or centuries-old myths?  At what point did you start to lose sight of your feelings, your empathy, your compassion?

I don’t know the story of that person in the trash heap. I do know how and why my daughter saw this person and why she notices those who have been overlooked, why she notices the ones who are invisible to others. She notices the ones who are dope sick and the ones who are clean and sober but mentally unstable. She doesn’t discriminate.  She notices the pain in our society when too many of us look the other way.

She notices because she used to be a drug addict living on the streets of Portland. As the chemical cocktails rearranged her brain chemistry, she began to hear voices (which she continues to struggle with today), she says, that told her, “Don’t stick that needle in your arm.”  She is one of too few who got clean and sober, by a miracle or through grace and a few caring people who gave her a kind word and emotional support.

From that experience, she started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Mudblosm Connections (https://mudblosmconnections.org/) to help the homeless and those financially distressed in the Portland area. She collects donations of clothes and food and distributes them regularly, sometimes person to person, tent to tent, sometimes in organized events in downtown Portland parks.

She finally convinced just one local grocery store to let her pick up their expired and almost expired food instead of throwing it in the dumpster.  Every day, seven days a week, she picks it up and drives it to seven different organizations including a senior housing project, several nonprofit organizations providing transitional housing and counseling, and organizations providing a cooked meal to the needy.  Last year alone, she collected and distributed 100,000 pounds of food just from that one store that would otherwise have thrown it away!  As an example, her first-ever pickup included 102 gallons of milk, four cases of frozen meats, boxes of bakery goods and piles of plastic food trays of various fruits and cut vegetables.

It costs her $600 a month for gas and car insurance to do this selfless job which is paid for by small monthly contributions from caring folks and from recycling cans and bottles.  Still a fledgling organization, no one is paid a salary. They hope to eventually receive grant money to expand and to pay for the selfless labor involved in saving good food from the landfills and providing that same food to those in need.  Mr. Bezos?  Mr. Musk?  Mr. Gates?  Anybody want to help?

I’ve accompanied my daughter on a wet winter day, handing out socks, food, and jackets to the homeless huddled in their tents under the bridges, the racket of cars thrumping overhead and the echo of cars traversing the darkened streets below those bridges.  I’ve been with her when she’s noticed a young couple huddled on a curb, shivering in the damp Portland winter.  She took the time to stop and talk to them.  She reached into her trunk and gave them jackets, and then before leaving, she took off her own boots and gave them to the girl who was wearing thin, wet canvas sneakers.

I know the stories of the richest of the rich by observing how they live in mansions large enough to house a small town; that they have their private jets and yachts and limousines in which to travel in luxury.  That they have closets bigger than the room I rent in a four-bedroom house, because I can’t afford my own house.  That they eat the finest foods only at the finest restaurants and drink $1,000 bottles of wine.  I know they don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

I know that our federal government spent $916 billion in 2023 to fight wars in other countries or to provide military assets to countries to attack other countries and render their lands unlivable.  I know that finally in January of 2024, $3.16 billion was allotted to programs to help the homeless, of which the state of Oregon received approximately $60 million. I know that too much of that money will be spent on more studies.

I know the largest contributor to homelessness is affordable housing.  I know that corporations are buying up properties to bolster their bottom line, and I know homeowners are choosing to rent their second homes as Air BnBs. I know poverty is the number one cause of homelessness.  I know that the largest number of homeless are African Americans. Thirty percent of the homeless are families with children. I know these facts.

I understand the circumstances that can un-house a person and how it is so very difficult to get into a new apartment: one needs a first, a last, and a cleaning deposit, coming to as little as (or as much as) needing $5,000, depending upon where you live.  When a person’s total income after taxes might be no more than $2300 a month, if that, and now with a history of eviction, it becomes insurmountable to get into a new apartment. I know 30% of the homeless are families.

I know there’s a sense of hopelessness, not only in our country but around the world, heightened by climate change and war.

What I don’t know is why humans treat others the way they do.  Other than I know that historiologically, the dissemination of human history continues to promulgate fear, hatred, and otherness.  The self-destruct button is hit with each iteration. Drugs, wars, gangs, homelessness. Bad actors in multiple countries around the world are murdering and subjugating their citizens or, like Netanyahu and Putin, are trying to wipe their neighbors off the face of the earth. None of it’s new to human history.  Wars and murder and subjugation are what constitute history. It is the human legacy, precipitated by greed, hatred, and delusion. We seem to be an evolutionary species gone haywire and heading to extinction.

Generosity, loving kindness, and wisdom are not measurable attributes to be found in a government study, but I believe they are the cure, already present within the human heart. It requires each of us to notice the invisible. It requires each of us to love our neighbor who is, like me, a spiritual being having a human experience. Within my human experience, I can choose to experience the joy of loving kindness, generosity, empathy and compassion.

This photo is a symbol of what is extant in our society. To the drumbeat of certain politicians, we are separated by fear. We are separated by greed. Stories for millennia have supported this scenario. Our Constitution was written by and for white landowners, those with money, to protect what they declared to be theirs alone.  To this day, its interpretation is supported by the same biased group of individuals to protect the interests of predominantly white and monied citizens, but not the poor, the colored, the disenfranchised.  Those who want power and live in fear, defend their right to possess firearms, an amendment enacted to protect the rights of slave owners to subdue a rebellion.  They defend the Electoral College, again, an archaic amendment that gave greater voting power to slave owners. To this day, the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified to give women equal rights, and now, those in power are stripping away even more rights of women.

We suffer under these laws to the point of being numb to the egregiousness of their perpetuity and frustrated against the power of those in control. Maybe for our own sanity, we stop listening to the news depicting the murder and destruction of people by stronger, greedier, more evil country leaders.  Maybe we turn away from the garbage heaps on the side of the road because … because why? Because you fear or hate what you see?  Or because you feel there’s nothing that can be done?  Because you’re waiting for a government (controlled still by the wealthy and white) to take action?  Maybe you wonder why you should even care?

I believe you should care because this young person hidden in this garbage heap on the side of a downtown city street is a symbol of the state of our society. It’s a symbol of a collapsed society. Maybe that knowledge produces too much fear and helplessness to look at it straight on, so we drive on by. Oh, my.

I believe when we shift our perceptions and beliefs to be inclusive, to be nonjudgmental, to be compassionate and caring, that only then can we find the path to heal the suffering of others and ourselves. It’s within each of us to heal the ills of our society by healing ourselves.

My daughter took this picture. She printed it. And she wrote across the top of it:  DO NOT THROW ME AWAY

I also plea:  Do not throw away your ability to feel compassion and empathy and generosity and loving kindness.  Do not throw away your ability to question authority.  Do not throw away the ever-present need to investigate where your prejudices and beliefs have come from, especially when they diminish or discard another’s rights to enjoy basic human rights. Do not throw away your ability to discern good and bad. Do not discard or diminish the will, courage, and heart to change those beliefs and to right perceived wrongs.

 

 

Certainty, Be Gone

Oh, certainty.

My thought is that “certainty” is a dangerous word indeed. It pours concrete on thoughts and ideas. It shadows and darkens how the sun should shine and glisten off a still pond. It stills the wind on which the spread of an eagle’s wings glides. It allows every gazelle to escape the jaws of the lion or it allows every lion to kill every gazelle.

Ah, certainty, be gone. May tablets of so-called truths rot away, be eaten by the bugs that survive on rotten wood or be dissolved in turbulent rains and pounding winds, to blow into the air and land lightly on all it previously burdened with its certainty. May constitutional dogmas yaw open into a question mark to meet the new moments exposed by the uncertainty of life, each person different than the next, each day bringing new gifts and new challenges, all different than those that came before. May old cultural myths acknowledge they are only flowers that bloom for a season before going to seed with new visions to wrap into the next season.

May possibilities be unlimited, searched out beyond the edges of certainty. May freedom lie in imagination with no boundaries except a morality based on loving kindness, compassion, generosity and joy.

Thoughts on the world

It might be gray and somber, slow turtle-sleeping day for creatures big and small. Or a blue-sky day through which a red-tailed hawk streaks. It’s a changing mirage, one that is out there and one that is nowhere; a world one can’t hold onto nor let go; one that reveals beauty and one in whose darkness hides all that’s grotesque only sometimes out of reach; and one that turns joy held so tightly into a passing memory.

On one day in one place, it’s a man’s world, where at every turn one sees the masculine spire of the conqueror jutting forth like giant penises: tall 80-story buildings, power poles thrusting into the sky; erect pine trees jutting up, pine nuts hanging down; and the unseen push of a billion engine pistons.

In another place on another day — maybe tomorrow — it’s a woman’s world, inviting openings, soft bosoms, gentle curves of loving arms. River banks, bending bows, the half moon of a bird’s head, a hand curved into another’s, an arm wrapped around a shoulder. Softness.

It’s a world of questions. It’s a world of answers. It’s a world in between the two. Guesses. Assumptions.

Like thoughts left dangling by fickle souls, it is a world where the raging storm is replaced by the mirrored pond; where the mirrored pond invites the toss of a pebble; a world where forever seeking leads to never arriving. It’s a world where peace slips away by the power of a look, and peace is restored by an outstretched hand; where the pain of childbirth is greater than the pain of death, and where the peace of death invites forth the birth of life.

It is a world to which one gives no meaning, and in the void, the gift of peace can be found. It is a world of music where in the pauses one hears a heart beat. Perdendosi.

It is a world where one can ride a roller coaster of fear of what might happen, or blame for what one thought happened. Maybe it was just all a dream from which one awakens to a turtle- sleeping day or to the scream of death — or was it life the talons carry back to the nest on the blue-sky day?

It is air breathed from the shadows of a receding path, the glue of memories holding the pain of love lost, the aches of life’s deepest rifts, as well as the tranquil anchorages and the signposts to peace.

It’s a world of energy, of waves rising up to touch the shore, a slip- sliding sibilance or crashing with a roar, while the wisp of breezes moves the earth to spin. It’s a world of crackled, dry, dusty leaves releasing their last gasps into the swollen smell of mountain bay laurel woven tight by junipers’ aroma.

Sometimes I think:  “I can stay here forever.”

Until I don’t.

For Lahaina – Eha loa ko’u naau

It’s been over a month since Fire took an old friend’s life, a friend I neglected to visit for more than 50 years. She was a friend that held me in my youth and taught me some wholesome ways — and some not so wholesome ways — to show me the difference in the paths that life lays out. She gave me the best Brandy Alexanders to drink when the sun was setting and the most perfect mornings, quiet and still sleepy, into which to ride my bike several miles north to the long stretch of ocean where I’d swim its shores for two miles.

After climbing out of the salty ocean, the morning still quiet and not quite awake, I’d ride back through her still quiet essence to my small house, lusciously dressed in island foliage. I’d eat sweet strawberry papaya filled with cottage cheese and two poached eggs and decide what else I’d do to spend my time with this inviting friend: Walk the streets of her old historic storefronts, visit her harbor, visit with the locals, go back to her kahakai, her kai. Maybe again course through on another bike ride. She always invited one to feel into her lazy peaceful pace.

She held my youth in sweet aloha and ohana. But Life got in the way, and I failed to visit her since I sailed from her harbor 50 years ago. Now she’s burned to the ground. Even the boats in the harbor burned to the water. Though I now lament that I never will see her again, like the best of old friends she will always reside deep in my heart.

Lahaina was and is a spiritual being that embodied the physical presence of an old Hawaiian fishing village. But with all beings who take up physical residence, it was her time to move on. I will miss her. Her Hawaiian Ohana who were born and raised in her presence and shared her days will mourn her and miss her deeply. Someone, more than likely wealthy haoles, will try to rebuild her, but I’m confident her spirit will remain aloof, hovering, never to reside on that shore again.

I’m also confident that she will visit all who knew her well. Like the returning Kōlea bird, they will sense and hear an almost silent keening as her Lahaina uhane wafts up through their hearts and memories, like a soughing breeze and, like a good friend, all who knew her will feel her arms wrapping them in her uhane and aloha.

Eha loa ko’u naau. I lost an old friend the day Lahaina burned.

The Weaver of Words

 

     The blue curtains are still half closed as to not disturb the cobweb that had been built the night before. She is thankful the sun had glistened off its threads in such a way that it had caught her eyes before jerking the curtain wide open to let in the morning. She moves her chair slightly so she can watch the web shiver in the sunlight as she drinks her coffee. Her kitchen, small, bright from that sunlight coming through the window, is free of clutter. It reflects her simplicity: room for only two at the table, no cute containers on the counters, only a blender for smoothies. She'd long ago put away the microwave and other contraptions of modern cooking. 
     With one finger, she moves the vagabonding strands of long brown hair to lodge behind her ear. Her face holds the quiet, reflected in a softness that is only gently etched by time that has worked creases into the corners of her eyes. Her mouth is pulled down slightly at its corners as gravity schlepps its ever-gentle pull on her aging skin. Mornings of sunshine and light, like this morning, help balance the reflections dwelling in the shadows.
     A writer, a weaver of words, a sleuth of storylines, her creations happen in the space of secluded rooms, wombs into which she descends where most life first thinks itself into existence. Far from tenebrous but necessarily holding the calm that the darkness of night embraces, her life is lived in the seclusion necessary to create, that place in which thoughts reside in quiet. Every morning, she has settled into the silence of her small house. Never any music played nor news of the world pushed into its clean energy. She fills with the silence, content, like a comfort food meal. She fills the silence with words. 
     She looks at the paper on which she's written a title, "Aweigh of Life - A Memoir and Travel Tales of Seven Years in the South Pacific," and she begins to write.

“I was never tethered tightly to my family body, nor was I brought close in for nurturing and protection. I felt I was not an essential thing to protect. As a young child, I was tied by a thin string which broke again and again. I tugged hard so they’d know my strength, and they’d see my accomplishments. “Am I good enough now?” Seeing my demands not as a need for recognition but as rebellion, they tied thicker ropes with stronger knots made of stricter rules. But they too frayed quickly, eaten away by the acid anger of an unhappy family. I drifted from home because there was nothing to hold me, and when I was far enough away, I pulled the anchor up completely and stowed it deep inside to put down only if or when I found safe harbor.

“Anchor aweigh, I touched that exhilarating freedom of deep waters. I ceased to look for safe harbor. I sought out the storms and mountains, any challenge that proved that I could survive without “them,” an ever-broadening pronoun. I changed course, changed boats – just as tides turned and winds shifted – like moods, changing hour by hour, day by day, leaving flotsam floating on receding horizons, never thinking that they would be the pieces I’d gather up one day to find my way home and the reason I left.”

     That's how it began several years before. Now remembering the genesis of that book, she ponders the story behind the story. A new cobweb hangs in her window. She herself feels suspended, twisting on woven threads, a coarse, emotionally tactile tatted fabric; holes left between tight stitches. She's reweaving something, giving it form, finding the warp and filling in the weft of a generational backstory.
     But her sacred world is interrupted by her cell phone ring, playing Ripple. She allows it to reach the beginning lyrics, "If my words did glow, with the gold of sunshine, and my tunes were played on a harp unsung....." before answering, "Hello, this is Edie."      
     She hangs up the phone and takes another sip of her coffee, gazing out the window. She'd almost forgotten that she had committed to a weekend of women who, for 30 years, have gathered together once a year at the summer's end. She is being reminded to bring a cooler of ice. Her preference is to stay here and keep writing. Each year she is nudged from her cocoon, a call to shift gears and join the Tawanda Girls for another "crazy weekend." Sometimes she commits, though this year she wishes she hadn't. 
     She fears letting loose her muse to roam elsewhere, to gather loose threads in the wind and wander afar. Will the weaver return?  Will this sacred spell be broken? Will the frivolity of the Tawanda women destroy the thaumaturgy created in this moment? Will the muse return to fill the empty pages between the bookends? 
     Time eases the sun away from her window. She resolves to have faith. Her coffee is cold, but she pours the last into her cup, adds the last of her half and half, and then she gathers up her things and walks out the door.

 

Do societies idealize romantic love

Do our societies idealize romantic love at the expense of other forms of love?

Responding to a prompt offered up in a workshop I’m participating in (The Dharma of Relationships, Paramis in Action), as is my nature, this question has flipped on the switch of a huge spotlight to explore what lies behind the myths we live by, most particularly “romantic love.”

My first, on-the-surface response, is that yes, they (societies) do. Then I think I would have to narrow it down to which societies do because I’m unsure whether the Leavers, as Daniel Quinn called those who live(d) in harmony with the “wild world,” do or did. It’s definitely a myth that has morphed with the separation of man from living in harmony with nature, living in that deep respect for the interconnectedness of all that exists from the tiniest cosmic particle to the humpback whale.

I view this question to be asked in a very active tense as if it is a conscious objective of “societies,” which I don’t believe it is. Has it in fact been a conscious idealization by “societies,” or, instead, has it been a very unconscious metamorphosis that began with religion, with a “God” “out there,” and that “God giving its only son to man” so that mankind can go to that better heavenly place after death, again separate from “heaven on earth.” It began with power and greed usurping the individual’s path, most particularly through dogmatic religions, I feel, wherein grasping greed has slimed its way into all aspects of one’s life with the proposed end result being that an individual’s goal is to obtain more — more wealth, more possessions, more status, more love (as if love is an object to obtain/attain).

For some reason, I reject that societies, in the active tense, idealize romantic love. Instead, as with all the delusions humankind has wrapped itself in, from the first agreements we unconsciously make with our parents from birth, with the communities we’re raised in, we unconsciously create myths and adopt these beliefs, as part of the circle of Dependent Origination. And we suffer because of it, just as we suffer from all of our clinging and grasping, whether it be dogma, possessions, love, or life itself.

Many societies did, and some still do, have arranged marriages. Romantic love did not enter into the world of accepted myths, according to Joseph Campbell, until it began to appear in stories like Iseult and Tristan. Dennis Patrick Slattery says, “Myths are living symbols. They serve each of us individually and collectively as guides to aid us in harmonizing our interior world with the surrounding landscape we inhabit. They serve us on a personal level as ordering and organizing principles whose aim is to offer our lives a sense of coherence, not perfection. Joseph Campbell believes that myths reveal the movement of psyche, indeed ‘of the whole nature of man and his destiny.'” So romantic love is a myth that has evolved but I don’t believe it is or was actively idealizing love; just laying on another veil of delusion, unconsciously shoring up delusions without serving a higher self.

Unless we were raised in a Buddhist environment, I think adopting and creating myths we live by is something we do individually from our point of separation from our mother’s body and with the induction of agreements we received from our parents and from our communities. Again, I don’t believe society itself has done anything consciously. I don’t even think that the individuals who continue to grasp for power do it consciously. It’s an individual human dilemma encapsulated in Dependent Origination, through which the Buddha’s teachings shine a light on the path out of the mythical dream. It might have begun with the instinct of all living things on this earth to continue, to procreate, allowing the loins of humankind to lead the way in that deception in order to continue. Or it might have started when mankind separated from living in a harmonic oneness with nature, moving into me/it, mine/its, mine/yours, which process, of course, always left a burning yearning in the heart that something was missing.

Some species mate for life, some don’t. In order to continue the human race, until the last century, the human myth was that marriage of a man and a woman is the only permitted form of marriage (and some are attempting to continue that myth). But marriage is an institution that came out of survival, and now, in our day and age, we do not need to marry, nor remain in partnership to survive — physically — nor should we continue to procreate as, clearly, 8 billion people is straining the threads that bind us together.

But clearly, we need love to survive, as Harry Harlow proved with his wire-monkey experiments in the ’50s, as social scientists repeatedly affirm when trying to heal the injured people rising up through our societies around the world where parents — unconscious and injured themselves and in their quest for more possessions or just more basics for survival — can’t find, don’t make, or lose the time to love their children, their fellow humans, themselves.

Because of the cause-and-effect path of my life, I’ve never quite lived within the bounds of what society projects on the cinder-block walls it’s built to surround and separate itself. Yes, I’ve stuck my toe into romantic love several times throughout my life. It always burned me. Or maybe I didn’t follow the rules or know how to do it. But whether it was my path, whether it was the deep burns suffered, or whether I instinctively knew that romantic love was not to be idealized,  I’ve chosen to explore the myths I’ve lived by. Saying society actively did something feels like it once again removes the individual from seeking the truths behind the myths we live by.

Since I’ve found the Buddhist path, I’ve peered behind the veils slip down. I’ve discovered a deeper loving kindness to be the fertile ground that sustains all and from which all springs. Loving kindness is an ever-present moment.  Romantic love is an ever-changing delusion, and at least for me, at 73, a distant past.

Earth Day Earth Way

I add my name
To those with more fame
Who point out the blame
Of those who inflame
The senses of the earth
And all those who gave birth.
And I add my name to the cries of dearth
Who others claim to have no worth.

Seldom sustained in political discussion
While ignoring earth’s pending destruction,
I watch their words flow like butter
Into the cracks and into the gutter.
But from all thoughts that I hold dear,
And discarding both fear and spear,
I embrace all hearts who are tuned to hear
The only course we must now steer.

So, turning from the glare
Of that deepening despair
We must rise up from the chair
And daily live the prayer
To wear love on our sleeve
From which force we shall cleave
From the fabric we weave
A strength no one may thieve.

Traveling on wafting fingers of smell

The wafting fingers of smell will connect me instantly to places in the past via the invisible subway of time, coursing through memories that otherwise would be lost. Or maybe they were never there. For the strangest reason, chopping an onion invariably takes me to the corner of two streets whose names I can no longer remember — Rio Grande and 13th? — near the University of Texas in Austin. I’m immediately standing in front of a small convenience store on that corner. Not inside the store, just standing outside looking at it. Why I travel to that spot when I cut an onion I have no idea, but I absolutely can verify I never cut an onion standing on that corner 55 years ago.

The smell of French perfume, which is unique compared to American scents, takes me to the New Hebrides, where we’re anchored stern-to in our sailboat in front of a colonizer’s grand home. Across the early morning still waters is a small island where women are cooking yams and the staples of the day over their cookfires. I can hear the cry of babies drifting across the still waters. I was pregnant at the time with my second child, and the smell of that perfume reminds me of the morning sickness I suffered.

The smell of marshland transports me to a childhood playing freely along the creeks of Maryland, while the smell of booze and cigarettes leaves me hiding in the darkness of night. On the rich sap smell of a pine forest, I travel to hot afternoons arriving at unnamed mountain campsites. The sweet smell of a salty ocean and creosoted wharf pilings carry me quickly to Cape Cod for the summer, while the whiff of fresh horse apples transports me on horseback to the foothills of Santa Barbara.

Why should I buy a plane ticket to travel when so many smells carry me away for free?